“Are you serious Dmitri? People pay the Earth to get into these things.”
He wasn’t fooling anyone, and he knew it.
Sarkhov almost allowed himself to laugh. Then he shook his head and took a handful of Usher’s blood-soaked hair. Usher winced like a wounded animal. He tried to focus on seeming semi-conscious, play on his injuries, and assume passive, non-macho body language. It wasn’t hard; he was like a rag doll.
Don’t show you’ve still got strength. They’ll only hurt you more.
Usher realized that his presence was a great embarrassment for Sarkhov. The mafia boss had wormed his way into a lucrative and trusted middle man position between the earthly interests of his own organization and the fringes of the Unseelie Court. His own masters in Moscow would be none too happy with him that his organization had been infiltrated, and the Unseelie were even less forgiving. It was entirely possible he would not live out the week. Still, that was a week longer than Usher had.
More than even that for Sarkhov was the money. For such rare and exotic fights as the Secret Arena offered, spectators and gamblers were willing to pay incredible fees for the privilege of a ticket. Usher had damaged the delicate relationship and there was nothing a criminal hated more than being hit in the wallet.
His great bear frame towered over Usher’s broken body.
“Whatever kind of Spook you are, you came here for answers. But you approached us, as a fighter. That means we are losing money not putting you in ring. How about we use a stone to kill the two birds?”
Just get it over with you big bastard.
Usher thought that Dmitri was being too imaginative in his manner of death, as well as his manner of metaphor. He certainly saw the poetic value in sending him into the ring to be beaten to death by their ex-Spetsnaz bare knuckle, Systema trained killers, but practically, it wasn’t going to happen. One good punch and he would be dead. He literally couldn’t stand up unassisted, and there would be no entertainment in it for the onlookers. On a good day in his previous life, he was an animal in the ring. Now he could feel his internal organs shutting down, lights going out inside him one by one.
Dmitri smiled down at him. “Don’t worry Tom Fool, once this is finished, I am going to hit your face with this crowbar, until it mashes up like boiled egg. But first, we need to make our returns on our investment.”
Usher tried to focus through his blurred vision and foggy thoughts.
Dmitri was handed a black briefcase. He quickly wheeled off the combination and snapped it open. From inside he produced a syringe and ampoule of dark ruby liquid.
The Feral.
The bodyguard next to Sarkhov pricked the ampoule with the syringe.
“How much sir?”
Sarkhov shrugged. “Doesn’t matter does it? He won’t be coming out of the blood dream this time. “
Usher tried to struggle but the many hands on him tightened like the limbs of an octopus. He was as weak as a child. Sweat lashed off his battered face. Dying was frightening; he hoped it would be over soon. He hoped Christi would get out of the safehouse before it was compromised. He hoped the rest of the team had found their own peace.
“You have put me in very awkward position. The Unseelie have left you for me to deal with, I think they want to test my loyalty, but I have already invested in you and need to make my money, or my own people will have my head. So you will fight, against my personal bodyguard, Kirill. He has been given double the dosage we are about to give you. We need to ensure the outcome of this fight. The Court gets its justice, I get my money. And I get to watch you torn to pieces. I have asked Kirill to take his time with you.”
Usher looked at the glimmering medical spike that Dmitri was moving ever closer to his eyeball. Even the cold sweat that had broken out on his forehead hurt. “Keep that voodoo shit away from me.”
Dmitri nodded. “Don’t think to get carried away Tom Fool. You think there are not ways to stop those riding high on the Feral, but there are. If you want your friends to have a good death, you will do exactly as you are told. You will take punishment, you will let Kirill beat you, you will give them a show, but you will not die until I allow it, understand? We inject now in your eyeball, yes?”
Usher knew his friends would be killed if they had not been already. He doubted Sarkhov had ever been a man of his word, but he had no choices left. He would not dishonour his friend’s memory by willingly allowing them to suffer because of him.
As he realized that he was not going to be able to say goodbye anyone he knew, a single tear of pain and humiliation rolled down Usher’s cheek. It burned him more than any cut or beating he had been given so far. The idea that these men could see he was afraid and broken, cut him deeper than any knife. The moisture from his eye felt like it moved in slow motion, the salt burning every millimetre of his skin on the way down. He had held that tear in for six hours of torture, and hated that this turncoat orb had betrayed him now, at the end.
Dmitri noticed it too, his big red cheeks beamed as he looked down at Usher.
“If thine right eye offends thee, pluck it out. Is Bible no?”
Usher managed a crooked smile, despite his broken jaw. His look was his best attempt at mocking and defiant.
Usher was doing anything to provoke him, make him angry, less calculating. Something to make him draw the Sig Sauer P229 he knew Dmitri kept inside his overcoat, blow the fear right out the back of Usher’s head.
Dmitri just smiled. This wasn’t courage from Usher, not bravado or macho posturing. It was training and professionalism, pure and simple. Trying to out think this mafia boss, make him lose control, finish things quicker.
Do anything a million times, you’ll get good at it. Stand on a firing range for thousands of totalled hours, and shooting a pistol becomes second nature. Do countless pull ups, sprints and deadlifts, over decades, you get strong and fast. Punch, kick, throw, lock, dodge and out think opponents over years and years of toil, and fighting people becomes as normal as breathing. Listen to other languages, immerse yourself in them over decades, and they are no more strange to your ear than English. Practise room clearing drills and hostage rescue, vehicle work and advanced driving, study the enemy. Hours of practise, drill, drill, drill.
By that same token, feel fear, over and over again, over years of exposure to threat, and it still feels the same, but you learn to accept it; it becomes part of your life, your repertoire of standard emotions.
He took a deep breath into his ragged lungs and got ready to go down swinging. He hoped he would be able to meet his death on his feet rather than his knees. He hoped he would give them a soldier’s death.
Usher was not trying to be brave, here at the end of his life. He was trying to be professional.
23
Christi sat in the kitchen, sipped a strong black coffee and drew deeply on her cigarette. She nervously scanned the flat, making sure she had shredded every relevant document, destroyed every hard drive, removed as much trace of herself and Usher as she could in the limited time she had.
The call from Usher had shocked her, she was still reeling from the thought of the STG headquarters being hit. It was so well protected, all sorts of weird voodoo the boffins had implemented, stuff she couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
Christi took it very personally, she knew and liked a lot of the people who worked there, but as soon as she received the call her automatic processes kicked in and her body soldiered through the task of wiping this safehouse clean before getting the hell out of dodge.
The STG was like family to her as it was to a lot of them. As a unit it seemed to draw the lost souls and the vagabonds towards it, people who would devote everything to it, sacrificing family life and relationships to the cause.
Christi joked and bantered with the guys, calling down ordinary women with their cosy suburban lives, but she knew she had given up the chance to have children during her time in the unit. There was no way she could have been present, stayed in one place and
become a good mother. She had met a woman two years ago that she would have gladly settled down with. Colleen was a young lawyer from Dublin, mature for her years with a life as far from Christi’s as it was possible to get. They had moved in together, found a routine and for a while, six months at least, life had seemed almost normal. Slowly the possibility of adoption or fertility treatment began to grow in her mind, the notion of growing old disgracefully and having long Sunday lunches, maybe even having her parents around to visit. Normal things Christi used so scoff at became appealing.
Then she had been sent on a mission to Yemen to stop something particularly nasty from the Unseelie Court, an unnatural beast that fed on local children and had kidnapped, tortured and killed over forty of them before the STG found it in the desert and gave it the punishment it deserved.
After that, the idea of bringing a child into this world never occurred to Christi again. She could not bring something so small and vulnerable into a world where things like that monster roamed so hungrily. Her first responsibility was to clean the planet of that filth, only then could she settle down and allow herself a life.
Soon after returning from Yemen, Colleen had left. The poor girl could never understand why Christi was so distant with her. Christi had never been able to speak in any depth about what she did for a living, about the things she was forced to see and do. The only people she could ever share that with were the rest of the Empire One. So for now she would have to be content with being the fun aunt to her many nieces and nephews.
She never spoke about notions of family and marriage to anyone else on the team, except Usher of course, he knew everything.
Christi flipped open her phone. She removed the battery and destroyed the sim-card then smashed the handset with the edge of an iron.
She gave the room a final scan then nodded, satisfied. Other than her call from Usher she was in the dark regarding the extent of the attack on the STG. Her instinct told her that if they had been hit then it could only be the precursor to another terrorist attack by the Unseelie, taking out the emergency response before taking out the main target.
It worried her, they had never been this organized before. The one thing that clearly separated our side and theirs was the clear line between magic and technology. Now it seemed to be blurring and it scared her.
Christi pushed her emotions down into the pit of her stomach, took a deep breath and soldiered on. She looked forward to being in their pre-arranged RV point, the pub they had christened Dead Gulch Saloon. It was a filthy dive full of old alcoholics and nicotine stained walls, but right now it was where the only people she trusted were gathering.
Christi grabbed her day sack and went out into the hallway, leaving the keys on the phone table as she left.
She never felt the blow to the back of her skull as pain, only as a cold numb impact and then she was falling.
Speckles of light wheeled in her vision, her thoughts rattled around inside her head in a kaleidoscope of jumbled ideas. She knew something was wrong but she couldn’t quite assemble the jigsaw for the moment. She rolled over onto her back, put her hand behind her head and felt the wetness of blood.
Above her stood a large man in a suit and overcoat, short greying haired and muscled neck like a bull. He peered down smiling and said something to her. Christi thought it was Russian or something else Slavic but it could just have been the blow to the head affecting her hearing. The man held a cosh of some kind in his hand.
Christi tried to speak, but her words came out as a meaningless groan. The huge man leaned down towards her, gripped the front of her jacket with a hairy hand and dragged her up off the floor. She was held there, the heels of her boots weakly scraping across the polished floorboards. His face was inches from hers and she could smell Turkish tobacco and old sweat. His breath was hot and sour in her face.
“Hello lady.”
Christi tried to push him away but her hands were weak and tingling with pins and needles. The attacker swatted her arms away each time with his big hand.
The big man smiled at her again, one brown cracked tooth bubbling with rot.
“Please, keep fighting, lady. I prefer.”
The terror and adrenaline hit Christi like a tidal wave.
Then Rottentooth swung her whole body into the wall of the hallway as if she weighed no more than a child. Christi felt the breath knocked from her and her vision blurred again. A moment later the man roared, coating her face with spittle as he flung her headlong into the pine bannister at the foot of the staircase.
The pine supports snapped and splintered as her body crashed through them, cutting her skin and peppering her with rough needles of wood. Christi felt something sharp in her side. She shook her head, tried to get up but her legs gave way beneath her. She reached down and her fingers felt something protruding from her body.
Looking down she winced as she saw a long shard of wood had punctured her left side, pushing right through and exiting her lower back. The big Russian was busy putting away his cosh and taking out a folding knife. He peered at her with calm questioning disdain, looking her up and down as if deciding how to best begin cutting her. He appeared to come to some sort of decision and called out to the kitchen, where another Russian voice answered and she heard the back door close. Then he advanced.
Christi took a few deep short breaths, braced herself for the pain of what she was about to do, then slammed her back against the wall, shoving the splinter of wood out into her waiting hand. She screamed in pain, gripping her fingers around the slippery shard of wood for all she was worth.
It was all she had.
Rottentooth lunged towards her and she pistoled her legs out to keep him at a distance. He knew she was hurt and kept smiling at her, darting in and out of range as he slashed the knife, relishing in her fear of being cut, enjoying her vulnerability.
Twice the knife caught her on the shinbone, slashing open the skin making her scream and sending her adrenaline into overdrive. Christi tried to muscle her way up the stairs to create some distance but Rottentooth kept advancing, waiting for his opening to plunge the knife into her body. He never seemed to stop smiling which terrified Christi even more.
Then he suddenly seemed to tire of the game and his smile became a snarl, his knife strokes became tighter, more professional. Christi used her uncut leg to push herself backwards up the last couple of stairs as she pistoned out with the other. Her every movement caused her to cry out in pain.
As highly trained as Christi was, there was no special move against a determined attacker with a knife, no matter what the YouTube clips said. It was and always would be the most desperate struggle of anyone’s life. But it was that or give up, accept the steel, and Christi Polson had no idea how to give up.
She gripped the sliver of blood soaked wood so tight that her own palm bled from the effort.
No. Not like this.
With a scream of rage Christi propelled herself forward at the big Russian, momentarily knocking his balance off. In a moment of pure luck she grabbed the wrist of his knife hand and plunged the shard of wood right through it with a wet crunch of tearing tendon and sinew.
His bloodshot eyes widened and he swore in Russian. Christi slammed her forehead into his face and pushed forward with all her fading strength. Rottentooth stumbled backwards, fell awkwardly and then tumbled head over heels down the twelve stairs.
Christi did not wait to see how badly hurt he was. She only saw the knife on the floor next to him, and began to limp down the stairs as fast as she could towards it.
Every step sent an electric shock of pain up her cut leg, her shirt was soaked in blood from the puncture wound in her side and her head still swam from the concussion. Each step took huge concentration and made her feel breathless and dizzy but all she could think was knife knife knife.
Rottentooth’s big hand twitched as he began to stir, pushing himself up into a press up position and look groggily around. He caught her eyes and his look was baleful.
Christi tried to move faster. Rottentooth pushed himself up then snarled in pain as he realized his shoulder was dislocated. He rolled over onto his back, reached out for the wall radiator to help himself to his feet. Then he fell back down as he realized his ankle was badly sprained. His eyes were beginning to look clearer and he was getting his bearings. Christi hopped painfully down the last two stairs to the slippery blood spattered linoleum floor. Rottentooth regarded her hatefully. Christi realized that he held no physical fear of her whatsoever.
Then both of them glanced at the knife, lying on the floor a few feet away.
Christi heard Rottentooth roar as he propelled himself across the slippery floor faster than she could have imagined. She did the same, launching herself off her good leg and crawling on her hands and knees. Christi started to panic as she saw that he was faster than her, there was no way she could reach it in time.
Then in a moment of luck, Rottentooth’s hand slipped on a gobbet of Christi’s blood and he went down, his chin cracking loudly off the floor. Christi was sure she saw him bite the very tip of his own tongue off, as he spat something small and fleshy out onto the linoleum.
It gave her the few seconds she needed. Her hand shot out and grabbed the knife just as his reached out and grabbed her ankle, dragging her across the floor.
Before she could squirm out of his grip he was on top of her, mounting her torso and causing the wound in her side to burn with pain. Fists rained down on her, punching her head, her chest, her ribs with brutish strength. He was three times her size and she was pinned as he slowly beat her to death. The pain was awful but she knew that she would lose consciousness in a few more moments then it would be over. She couldn’t allow that.
Christi heard herself scream, something low and guttural between fear and rage.
She wrestled her hand free and then the knife was in his stomach, stabbing again and again like a piston. The dark blood of his guts soaked her face but she kept going, a continual wet whisper of steel like a sushi chef at work.
The Last Line Series One Page 18